On reflection, the first signal that things were going to go wrong should have been the fairy lights.  Hotel lobbies rarely feature fairy lights. Hotel lobbies are rarely shaped like corridors. Hotel lobbies, even in this notorious part of Hong Kong, are almost never shaped like corridors covered with fairy lights leading only to a series of doors.

Most of the doors in this corridor have signs on them. Most of them are written in a language that is indecipherable to me. One of them, however, is in English. This is what it says:

Cheap rate girl.

Hotel lobbies never, as a rule, advertise “cheap rate girls”. This is when the realisation drops that I may just be in the wrong place.

I pull out my phone to re-confirm the address. I have already hauled my luggage up three flights of stairs, passing, on my way, another sign, asking patrons to please not use the stairwell as a public toilet. From the stench I can only concur that there is either a high level of illiteracy in the building or people just don’t care.

As I study the booking confirmation, I hear movement from within the rooms and a door creaks open.  I don’t instantly realise that the girl, now standing in the crack of the door, is naked. I’m too busy shoving my phone back into my pocket.

‘Can I help you?’ says the naked girl.  I do not think she is the receptionist.

I consider all manner of responses. Should I pull out my phone again, show her the email and enquire if I am at the correct hotel? This would seem to be the normal thing to do were it not for the nakedness.  Nakedness subverts normal behaviour in almost all circumstances.

I turn around and walk away from the naked girl who closes the door wordlessly behind me. I hear no sigh of disappointment. She must see a lot of this sort of thing.

At the end of the corridor I find a shirtless man folding towels. Because he isn’t quite as naked, I show him my booking. He laughs and points downstairs. He is still laughing as I trudge down to the second floor. He seems to be having a good day.

On the second floor is a hotel lobby, although not, importantly, the lobby for the hotel that I am trying to find. When I show the receptionist, a curmudgeonly old lady, the booking confirmation, she ushers me out of her lobby as if I had just showed her a small, terminally ill animal, pointing me back up to the corridor of fairy lights and naked people. I try to tell her that I don’t want to go back up to the corridor of fairy lights and naked people, but she shoos me up there anyway.

Feeling defeated, I leave the building, emerging back out into the hot Hong Kong afternoon. I phone my girlfriend.

“The hotel is a brothel.” I explain.

My girlfriend calls the number provided on the booking website. The man who answers does not seem surprised to learn that his hotel is a brothel and asks, begrudgingly, if this means we will be cancelling the reservation. My girlfriend informs him that, yes; regrettably, we shall be doing just that. She then directs me to another hotel, just down the road.

I have to push a buzzer to enter the second hotel, which has a dirty American flag by the door. The woman who answers seems to be, if not a clone, then a distant relative of the old lady who shooed me out of the previous hotel.

‘What you want?’ she asks, peering at me from over the rim of her glasses.

She has been watching a television period drama in what passes for the lobby. This lobby is also a corridor, but this time, thankfully, without any fairy lights. The woman seems surprised that someone would come here wanting a room and clucks reproachfully when I tell her that this is my genuine reason for disturbing her.

She shows me to a room which is a bed on a floor and which has no discernible way to get past the bed to any other part of the room. This isn’t a major problem as there doesn’t appear to be any other parts to the room, or, indeed a bathroom. There is a dead cockroach on the floor and the receptionist grumbles at me as if this is somehow my fault.

The lady whips out a calculator and jabs in a ridiculous asking price for one night’s stay, seemingly under the impression that she is running the Hong Kong offshoot of the Hilton and that the Cockroach is Paris in her best evening gown. It is so insultingly ridiculous that I angrily dismiss it out of hand and turn to leave, only then realising that she has locked me in. This is not good news as now the lady begins screaming at me in Cantonese, demanding that I stay in her aggressively run hovel and waving the calculator at me like a loaded weapon.  I ask her several times to open the door, something she eventually does but only after a further two or three minutes of angry wailing.

I stumble back out into the busy Hong Kong heat and call my girlfriend once again, asking her if she has any other hotel recommendations: ideally ones that aren’t brothels or the Hong Kong equivalent of the Bates motel.

It’s on my way to the third hotel that I walk into the old man.

Actually, I’m not sure that I ever did walk into him or if he deliberately walked into me.  Either way there is a collision. I feel guilty and apologise, something that, in retrospect is probably a mistake.

Although he is an old man, he is taller than me and made of sturdy looking stuff. His sandal has fallen off and one of the yellowed, well worn straps has broken. An apology is not what he is looking for.

‘You broke my shoe,’ he yells ‘Don’t say sorry. Buy me a new shoe.’

I ask him how much a new shoe might be. He answers, with an almost practised quickness ‘$100’.

I tell the man that my own shoes aren’t even worth $100 and that his sandals certainly aren’t. Still, he continues his protestations in an increasingly noisy fashion, now making small kicking gestures and waving his hands hysterically. A crowd is gathering to watch. One man takes a photo on his cell phone. He seems to be enjoying his day.

I walk away, feeling the same indignation at this scammer as I did at the lady in the hotel. Peeling away from the busy main street, I head down a deserted alley that ought to lead me to my hotel. It is as I stop to check my map that I hear his voice again, still yelling about $100 and now running, frantically, after me, waving the sandal in the air.

He catches up and grabs me around the wrist, as if making a citizen’s arrest. He is surprisingly strong and, in the alley, he doesn’t look so old anymore. I begin to feel threatened but there is also another fear; fear that, should I resist him physically, I may end up hurting him and giving him an even stronger case for compensation.

‘Don’t try to run away,’ he yells at me, ‘I will call police.’

Asking him to please do just that, I finally manage to break his grip.

‘We will wait here. See what the police say about this.’ he says and folds his arms to begin an apparently genuine wait for a random policeman to wander by.

Realising that we could easily be here all day, I assure him that it would be better for us both if we leave the deserted alley and try to find a policeman on the main strip together. Begrudgingly, he agrees but continues grabbing at me. Eventually, I ask a shopkeeper to intervene and the police duly arrive to dissolve the situation.

I watch as the old man waves the shoe at the young policeman. I try to repress a smile as he makes wild kicking and punching motions, replicating in his head, whatever imaginary fist fight he now believes has occurred.

‘He says you kicked him and broke his shoe.’ chuckles the policeman.

I tell him my story and stress the $100 aspect. The policeman nods in understanding and sends the old man off on his way. His sandal appears to be working just fine despite the broken strap. He does not look at me as he leaves. Meanwhile, I take advantage of the policeman’s kindness as he directs me to my hotel.

I’m thinking about all of this, the following day, as I stand, nervously awaiting my fate in the little visa office at New Mandarin Plaza.  I’ve been told that there is a danger that my visa may not be renewed. The anniversary of Tiananmen has the Chinese authorities worried and there is the possibility I will have my re-entry to China denied.

I’m not alone in the visa office. A man in sunglasses and baseball cap is waiting with me by the counter. As I’m checking my documents, the man taps me on the shoulder.

‘Excuse me, Sir.’ He says ‘is this the form we need for the visa?’

I look at the polite man, then down at his Belgian passport and then back up at his face: one I remember from countless home video rentals as a kid.

The polite man is Jean Claude Van Damme.

Of course he’s Jean Claude Van Damme.

Why wouldn’t he be?

I nod at him and this hero from a hundred Kung-fu action flicks smiles and wanders over to the counter to begin quietly filling out his form.

He does not roundhouse kick anyone on the way there.

In the end I get another extension to my Visa and breathe a sigh of relief. Van Damme gets his visa too, although he will have to wait four days to collect it because he is Belgian. He takes the news well. He does not unleash a ninja fury.

Finally, I’m almost back at the Chinese border and I smile as I hand over my passport to the border control guard, who holds up a piece of yellow card from behind his glass window and taps it with his pen.

I have forgotten to fill out the mandatory departure form.

I ask him if I can borrow his pen. He declines my request with a beaming smile and motions for me to return to the back of the queue.

I turn around, looking at the weaving, never-ending line that snakes out behind me and trudge, disconsolately, to the back of the hall to collect a pen.

As I’m doing so, I think about fairy lights in seedy hotels. I think about naked Asian girls appearing at doors and the people who usually open those doors. I think about a laughing shirtless man folding towels and a succession of angry receptionists screaming at me for reasons I can’t comprehend. I think about a crazed pensioner waving his broken sandal at me and I think about a bureaucratic border guard taking small pleasures from the dull monotony of his day by sending foreigners to the back of the line.

I wonder what Jean Claude Van Damme would do if he were here, confronted with such situations and, briefly, I consider unleashing a ninja fury.

Then I remember what Jean Claude Van Damme would actually do in such circumstances and, smiling at my own private joke, I pick up a biro from the counter and quietly begin filling out the form.

About Michael Teasdale

Michael Teasdale is an English writer, originally from Newcastle upon Tyne. He has enjoyed spells living in Sweden, Vietnam and China and currently lives in Ko Samui where he collects cats. He has previously written for Novel Magazine in the UK and blogs and writes at shoeboxofstories.com

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